Preliminary Quantitative Assessment of Earthquake Casualties and Damages

Prognostic estimations of the expected number of killed or injured people and about the approximate cost associated with the damages caused by earthquakes are made following a suitable methodology of wide-ranging application. For the preliminary assessment of human life losses due to the occurrence of a relatively strong earthquake we use a quantitative model consisting of a correlation between the number of casualties and the earthquake magnitude as a function of population density. The macroseismic intensity field is determined in accordance with an updated anelastic attenuation law, and the number of casualties within areas of different intensity is computed using an application developed in a geographic information system (GIS) environment, taking advantage of the possibilities of such a system for the treatment of space-distributed data. The casualty rate, defined as the number of killed people divided by the number of inhabitants of the affected region, is also computed and we show its variation for some urban concentrations with different population density. For a rough preliminary evaluation of the direct economic cost derived from the damages, equally through a GIS-based tool, we take into account the local social wealth as a function of the gross domestic product of the country. This last step is performed on the basis of the relationship of the macroseismic intensity to the earthquake economic loss in percentage of the wealth. Such an approach to the human casualty and damage levels is carried out for sites near important cities located in a seismically active zone of Spain, thus contributing to an easier taking of decisions in emergency preparedness planning, contemporary earthquake engineering and seismic risk prevention.     

Climatological distribution of lightning density observed by satellites in China and its circumjacent regions

The 0.5°×0.5°grid resolution distribution of lightning density in China and its circumjacent regions have been analyzed by using the satellite-borne OTD (Apr 1995-Mar 2000) and LIS (Dec 1997-Mar 2003) databases. It is shown that: (i) Firstly, the variability of the lightning density (LD) is particularly pronounced over the different subareas, 9 times greater over the south than the north side of Himalayas Mountains, 2.5 times greater over the eastern than the western area of China. While the maximum and minimum LD are respectively 31.4fl/km2/a (in Guangzhou region) and less than 0.2fl/km2/a (in the desert of western China). Secondly, the LD of China's continent regularly varies with latitude and distance off coast, which is consistent with annual mean precipitation in varying trend. In conclusion, the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, the China's three-step staircase topography and the latitude are three important factors affecting macro-scale characteristics of the LD distribution, (ii) The regional differences     

Seismicity and seismic hazard mapping of northern Algeria: Map of Maximum Calculated Intensities (MCI)

An earthquake catalogue covering the period1716–2000, comprising 2430 events, has beencompiled for the region lying between3°W-9°E and 31°N-38°N. It results fromraw data of IGN, ISC, USGS and Algeriansources, enabling an input consisting oforigin time H, geographical coordinates(longitude and latitude) and at least one of thefollowing parameters: surface wavemagnitude Ms, body wave magnitude Mb,epicentral intensities Io. Empiricalrelations permit transformations of Mb andMs into Io. The output consists in H,, , Ms, Mb, Io, and focal depth h whichis fixed to 10 km. The number ofevents falls to 1458 characterised by Ms 3.3 and Mb 3.6, or Io III. The fixed depth is suggested by thebest documented Algerian macroseismic mapsthat also lead to an empirical intensityattenuation law. A first application ofthis catalogue allows the drawing up of anupdated Seismicity and a MaximalCalculated Intensities (MCI) Maps ofAlgeria. The MCI map is obtained by usingthe empirical attenuation law: theintensities inferred by the whole eventsconstituting the catalogue are computed atnodes of a 5×5-km grid covering the area ofstudy. The corresponding maximum value isassigned to each node. The MCI map producedthat way gives precise spatial informationin comparison with Maximum ObservedIntensities (MOI) maps obtained in previousmacroseismic studies. This document may beuseful in mapping the seismic hazard inNorthern Algeria, without attachingprobabilities to ground-motionparameters.     

Atmospheric densities derived from CHAMP/STAR accelerometer observations

The satellite CHAMP carries the accelerometer STAR in its payload and thanks to the GPS and SLR tracking systems accurate orbit positions can be computed. Total atmospheric density values can be retrieved from the STAR measurements, with an absolute uncertainty of 10-15%, under the condition that an accurate radiative force model, satellite macro-model, and STAR instrumental calibration parameters are applied, and that the upper-atmosphere winds are less than . The STAR calibration parameters (i.e. a bias and a scale factor) of the tangential acceleration were accurately determined using an iterative method, which required the estimation of the gravity field coefficients in several iterations, the first result of which was the EIGEN-1S (Geophys. Res. Lett. 29 (14) (2002) 10.1029) gravity field solution. The procedure to derive atmospheric density values is as follows: (1) a reduced-dynamic CHAMP orbit is computed, the positions of which are used as pseudo-observations, for reference purposes; (2) a dynamic CHAMP orbit is fitted to the pseudo-observations using calibrated STAR measurements, which are saved in a data file containing all necessary information to derive density values; (3) the data file is used to compute density values at each orbit integration step, for which accurate terrestrial coordinates are available. This procedure was applied to 415 days of data over a total period of 21 months, yielding 1.2 million useful observations. The model predictions of DTM-2000 (EGS XXV General Assembly, Nice, France), DTM-94 (J. Geod. 72 (1998) 161) and MSIS-86 (J. Geophys. Res. 92 (1987) 4649) were evaluated by analysing the density ratios (i.e. “observed” to “computed” ratio) globally, and as functions of solar activity, geographical position and season. The global mean of the density ratios showed that the models underestimate density by 10-20%, with an rms of 16-20%. The binning as a function of local time revealed that the diurnal and semi-diurnal components are too strong in the DTM models, while all three models model the latitudinal gradient inaccurately. Using DTM-2000 as a priori, certain model coefficients were re-estimated using the STAR-derived densities, yielding the DTM-STAR test model. The mean and rms of the global density ratios of this preliminary model are 1.00 and 15%, respectively, while the tidal and latitudinal modelling errors become small. This test model is only representative of high solar activity conditions, while the seasonal effect is probably not estimated accurately due to correlation with the solar activity effect. At least one more year of data is required to separate the seasonal effect from the solar activity effect, and data taken under low solar activity conditions must also be assimilated to construct a model representative under all circumstances.     

中国海岸带分布规律及其海部要素变化检测

在海岸带图测绘完成后,海部要素的变化是导致海岸带图使用价值降低的重要因素.根据我国海岸的组成物质将其归纳为淤泥质海岸、沙砾质海岸、基岩海岸、红树海岸和珊瑚海岸,并归纳总结了每一种海岸的空间分布规律.分析了影响海岸线、干出滩以及近海水深等海部要素变化的主要因素,海岸要素变化的因素和变化规律,进而提出了海部要素实质性变化的检测统计方法,对提高海岸带图测绘效率、缩短成图周期、确定更新周期和制定更新方案都具有重要的意义.     

Climate during the last glacial maximum in the Wasatch and southern Uinta Mountains inferred from glacier modeling

Recent improvements in understanding glacial extents and chronologies in the Wasatch and Uinta Mountains and other mountain ranges in the western U.S. call for a more detailed approach to using glacier reconstructions to infer paleoclimates than commonly applied AAR-ELA-ÄT methods. A coupled 2-D mass balance and ice-flow numerical modeling approach developed by [Plummer, M.A., Phillips, F.M., 2003. A 2-D numerical model of snow/ice energy balance and ice flow for paleoclimatic interpretation of glacial geomorphic features. Quaternary Science Reviews 22, 1389–1406] allows exploration of the combined effects of temperature, precipitation, shortwave radiation and many secondary parameters on past ice extents in alpine settings. We apply this approach to the Little Cottonwood Canyon in the Wasatch Mountains and the Lake Fork and Yellowstone Canyons in the south-central Uinta Mountains. Results of modeling experiments indicate that the Little Cottonwood glacier required more precipitation during the local Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) than glaciers in the Uinta Mountains, assuming lapse rates were similar to modern. Model results suggest that if temperatures in the Wasatch Mountains and Uinta Mountains were  6 °C to 7 °C colder than modern, corresponding precipitation changes were  3 to 2× modern in Little Cottonwood Canyon and  2 to 1× modern in Lake Fork and Yellowstone Canyons. Greater amounts of precipitation in the Little Cottonwood Canyon likely reflect moisture derived from the surface of Lake Bonneville, and the lake may have also affected the mass balance of glaciers in the Uinta Mountains.     

Observations and modelling of the travel time delay and leading negative phase of the 16 September 2015 Illapel,Chile tsunami

The systematic discrepancies in both tsunami arrival time and leading negative phase (LNP) were identified for the recent transoceanic tsunami on 16 September 2015 in Illapel, Chile by examining the wave characteristics from the tsunami records at 21 Deep-ocean Assessment and Reporting of Tsunami (DART) sites and 29 coastal tide gauge stations. The results revealed systematic travel time delay of as much as 22 min (approximately 1.7％ of the total travel time) relative to the simulated long waves from the 2015 Chilean tsunami. The delay discrepancy was found to increase with travel time. It was difficult to identify the LNP from the near-shore observation system due to the strong background noise, but the initial negative phase feature became more obvious as the tsunami propagated away from the source area in the deep ocean. We determined that the LNP for the Chilean tsunami had an average duration of 33 min, which was close to the dominant period of the tsunami source. Most of the amplitude ratios to the first elevation phase were approximately 40％, with the largest equivalent to the first positive phase amplitude. We performed numerical analyses by applying the corrected long wave model, which accounted for the effects of seawater density stratification due to compressibility, self-attraction and loading (SAL) of the earth, and wave dispersion compared with observed tsunami waveforms. We attempted to accurately calculate the arrival time and LNP, and to understand how much of a role the physical mechanism played in the discrepancies for the moderate transoceanic tsunami event. The mainly focus of the study is to quantitatively evaluate the contribution of each secondary physical effect to the systematic discrepancies using the corrected shallow water model. Taking all of these effects into consideration, our results demonstrated good agreement between the observed and simulated waveforms. We can conclude that the corrected shallow water model can reduce the tsunami propagation speed and reproduce the LNP, which is observed for tsunamis that have propagated over long distances frequently. The travel time delay between the observed and corrected simulated waveforms is reduced to <8 min and the amplitude discrepancy between them was also markedly diminished. The incorporated effects amounted to approximately 78％ of the travel time delay correction, with seawater density stratification, SAL, and Boussinesq dispersion contributing approximately 39％, 21％, and 18％, respectively. The simulated results showed that the elastic loading and Boussinesq dispersion not only affected travel time but also changed the simulated waveforms for this event. In contrast, the seawater stratification only reduced the tsunami speed, whereas the earth's elasticity loading was responsible for LNP due to the depression of the seafloor surrounding additional tsunami loading at far-field stations. This study revealed that the traditional shallow water model has inherent defects in estimating tsunami arrival, and the leading negative phase of a tsunami is a typical recognizable feature of a moderately strong transoceanic tsunami. These results also support previous theory and can help to explain the observed discrepancies.